New Sight (20 page)

“Anything else?” Jodi asked.

Lys studied Jodi, waiting to see sweat break out on her forehead or her hands clench together as she either crashed or was assaulted by her own Need, but nothing happened. Jodi just kept smiling. Lys pulled together her courage and asked, “Don’t you crash?” The words tumbled out.

Before Jodi could answer, the sound of footsteps came down the hall. Lys expected to see Inez come through the doorway. Instead Mr. Mason appeared. A smile spread across his face when he saw Lys.

“I’m so glad to see that you made it. We were all worried.”

Lys’s heart sank into her stomach. Mr. Mason. She hadn’t figured out what she wanted to say to him. So she said, “Thanks to Mark, we’re fine.”

“I hear that Mark wasn’t the only one who helped get you here.”

“Uh, no, I guess not.” Lys shifted on the bed. Could she trust him? As if in answer, a trickle of water came from her hair, flowing all the way down her back, causing her to shiver.

“I was hoping I could speak with you,” Mr. Mason said.

Chapter 23

Lys’s blood
went cold, and she willed Inez to shower faster. “Yeah, but we should probably wait until Inez gets back. She wants to meet you.”

“I’d like to meet her, but I only have a few minutes.” He sighed. “I think I owe you an explanation.”

Oh, sure,
now
someone offered to explain—now that she was full of conflicting information and half-formed opinions. Lys wondered if she should try to get out of the conversation, but then her brain kicked in. She shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to get some facts out of him.

“I spoke with your parents this morning,” Mr. Mason said.

That caused her throat to constrict, and she searched his blue eyes for truth behind the statement. “You did?”

He nodded. “Why don’t we go to my study?”

The possibility of talking to her parents overrode her trepidation, “Okay.” Lys turned to Jodi. “Will you please tell Inez where I went?”

“Sure, but I’m betting that the other taste users will be in here before you get back. Everyone loves the new kids.”

Good thing Inez could take care of herself. Lys smiled. “Thanks.”

Mr. Mason led her back through the now-quiet great room, and up the stairs next to the front entrance. They went past two rooms, both filled with more sleeping bags and back packs, before Mr. Mason stopped in front of a larger set of doors. They looked heavy—carved wood and ornate brass knobs. Lys felt like the doors didn’t belong here in the mountains, but that they should be guarding the library of an old estate house.

“This is my study. We’ll have some privacy up here.” Mr. Mason removed a key from his pocket and inserted it into the knob. He opened the door and gestured her inside. “As you can see, the rest of this place is pretty crowded.”

Lys swallowed. Stepping inside the study felt like a Herculean effort. Questions weighed her down like chains, and she had to concentrate on moving her feet. Were the Fates tugging her back, trying to keep her from entering?

“Let me flip the lights on,” Mr. Mason said.

Light filled the room, and Lys stifled a gasp. Before her lay a beautiful library. Intricately carved shelves covered two walls of the small room. Tattered spines lined the rows with titles in languages that Lys couldn’t read. A table stood under the curtained window, laden down with stacks of tomes. The smell of old paper and glued bindings filled Lys’s nostrils, bringing a thousand memories of sitting in the library down the street from her house to her mind. She could practically hear the crackle of turning pages.

“Wow,” she said.

Mr. Mason chuckled. “A modest collection.”

She glanced over at him and raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve got quite a few more at another location.”

“What are they?” Lys asked.

“Books regarding the magic of our world,” Mr. Mason said. He gestured Lys to a couch that sat facing a low square table.

“Books about magic?” Lys asked, slowly going toward the couch. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to find a single title she could read.

“Well,” Mr. Mason followed her. “The largest that I know about anyway.”

“But how?” Lys stopped herself. “These are
all
about magic?”

Mr. Mason shook his head. “No.” He indicated that she should sit. “Only a few are
all
about magic, others mention magic.” When she finally sat down, he followed suit, settling at the opposite end of the couch. “Considering when we started we knew very little, any bit of information was important.”

Lys allowed him to meet her gaze before turning away. He sighed. “I apologize for what happened. I usually like to explain the magic myself.”

He was apologizing for not telling her about the magic? What about the attack? Her being kidnapped? The New? Her parents? There were so many other things she wanted to discuss. Right now magic sat at the bottom of the list.

“You said you talked to my parents.” Lys wanted to know about this first. The thought of having them worried out of their minds about her was unforgivable.

“Yes.” Mr. Mason looked as if he’d been expecting a different question. “I spoke with your father yesterday after Ayden picked you up.”

“But Doyle is at my house!” she said.

Mr. Mason held up a hand. “He’s not at your house. Ayden told me what happened. Doyle got onto the phone lines and rerouted any call that he thought might lead you to him.”

“How did he do that?”

“The New rely heavily on technology. I have no doubt that this was an easy task for his people.”

Lys digested that. “You talked to my dad? What did you tell him? Can I call him?”

Mr. Mason shook his head. “We’re too far up here in the mountains to get a clear signal. We’re sitting as far away from technology as we can, for obvious reasons.” She opened her mouth to retort, but Mr. Mason held up his hand again. “I spoke with him and told him that you were fine. He was relieved. He told me to tell you that he loved your guts.”

Lys closed her mouth. That was an inside joke between her and her dad. Her mom knew about it, too, but no one else would. Mr. Mason had talked to her parents. That was a relief. She turned her worries in a different direction. “How did my face get on the news?”

“I’m afraid that was the New. As soon as you all escaped, they sent the word out to the local police.”

Well, that made sense. “Who are those guys?”

Mr. Mason sat back. “What did Mark tell you?”

Lys related the conversation they’d had with Mark. “All he told us was that the people who used technology won, and that they were the New. He didn’t explain much more.”

“Then he only told you half of the story which, considering the circumstances, was probably wise.”

So there
was
more to the story. Lys met Mr. Mason’s eyes, wanting to see the truth there. “What’s the other half of the story?”

“We don’t have a lot of details,” Mr. Mason started. “Most of the information from the time of magic is gone—lost to history and those that wanted the rest of the world to forget about magic. However, we have learned a few things.

“When the New made their play, a small group of those who wielded powerful magic fought back. They almost beat the New, but in the end they lost, and the New hunted them down and killed most of them.”

“But not all of them?”

Mr. Mason shook his head. “A handful survived, but they were forced into hiding.”

“What about the rest of the magic users?” she asked. “Mark said that everyone in the world used magic in one way or another, even if it was just a tiny amount.”

“After the Old—those that opposed the New—were defeated, most people hid their magic abilities. It didn’t take long for magic to fade away almost completely.”

“The Old?” Lys asked. Brady was going to choke on that name.

“We don’t really have a word that matches the translation, so we just coined them the Old.”

“So if people stop using magic, it fades away?” Lys didn’t understand. Her thoughts turned to her earlier musings. “And why is the magic so dangerous now? If everyone wielded it at one time, why is it so horrible?”

“Good questions.” Mr. Mason stood and walked over to a shelf on the far wall. He pulled a book as long as Lys’s arm out from between two others with the hiss of leather on leather. He brought the volume with him and placed it gently on the table before he sat down.

Cracks spider-webbed the green, faded leather of the cover. Cream colored frays could be seen through the worn edges of the spine, and the binding looked as if it may not survive many more openings. A single yellow scrap of paper dangled from the bottom of the pages. Mr. Mason placed his finger on the yellow marker and swung the book open. Lys heard the leather creak and the pages crackle. A musty smell filled her nostrils.

“The New disrupted the flow of magic in our world,” Mr. Mason said.

“Flow of magic?” Lys asked, distracted by the beautiful artwork on the pages before her. Lys had no idea how detailed the old book would be. Flowing calligraphy and intricate drawings of flowers, trees, and ivy covered the two pages before her. She leaned closer. None of the words were English, but she could decipher the pictures.

A map of the world took up most of the left page. At least, it looked like their world. The basic shapes were similar enough to make the connection.

Black, red, gold, blue, and silver lines crisscrossed the map.

“This is the most informative book I have found on how the magic of our world works,” Mr. Mason said. “I believe this represents the flow of magic as it was in ancient times.”

Lys followed the lines with her eyes. Different symbols accompanied any place the lines crossed: a hand, a nose, an eye, an ear, or what must be a tongue. However, on five of the crossings, where more than two gold lines intersected, a gold star appeared.

Scrawled notes surrounded the map, some of them in the margins of the book and obviously added long after the original text—Lys couldn’t read any of them.

Her eyes turned to the next page. More indecipherable text covered the top portion, but a set of five drawings occupied the bottom half of the page. One looked like that big rock in the middle of Australia. Another was clearly a volcano topped by snow. The third was a cave and the fourth looked like a lake full of giant, gray rocks. The last one resembled a tripod made of huge, red slabs of stone. Each picture had a star next to it.

“Do these match up?” she asked, pointing at the stars on both pages.

“I believe they do.”

Lys’s eyes wandered back to the map. “This one is close.” A star sat in North America, a short distance below the Great Salt Lake, although the lake appeared much larger than it did today.

“It is.” Mr. Mason smiled.

“What does it mean? What are these places? Are they places of magic? Do the colors of the lines have to do with power?”

“I don’t know about the lines, although I have to assume that they correlate with the power levels of magic, as you said.” He sat back, pointing at the right hand page. “As for these places, I believe those are the outlets of magic into this world.”

“Outlets?” Lys asked.

Mr. Mason traced one of the gold lines with his finger. “There are very few places where more than two lines cross. The stars mark where at least three gold lines cross one another. From there, the flow branches out to the rest of the planet.”

Lys followed a few of the lines with her eyes. “So the stars indicate outlets?” She still didn’t understand that part.

“Outlets for magic,” Mr. Mason reminded her.

“If there are outlets for magic, why don’t people know about them?”

“Because,” Mr. Mason said, sighing, “the New plugged them.”

Lys took a moment to think about that. “They plugged the outlets? How?”

He shook his head. “We have no idea. I doubt those of the New today know how it was done.”

“You know them? I mean, the New?”

“They have hunted me since I was young. There are a few I know personally, but not many.” He shifted in his seat. “We have tried to reconcile our differences, but each time we try, tragedy follows.”

“So why did they plug the magic?” Lys asked.

“To keep magic users from defeating them. The Old fought for a long time, even when their numbers dwindled down to almost nothing, but in the end only five of them remained.”

“Five?”

“Five users, each a different sense—all neutrals.”

Lys was a neutral user. “What’s so special about being neutral? Mark said that each power level had its advantages but that one wasn’t better than another.”

Mr. Mason nodded. “Mark is correct.” He leaned forward and turned the book over a few pages. A single illustration filled the right side.

Five people—two women and three men—stood in a circle around a glowing depression in the ground with a tree carved into it. They were dressed in flowing robes, and Lys could clearly see the golden eyes of the three facing her.

The people had their hands raised above them, and on their arms they wore leather wrist guards. The guards bore the same symbols from the map: hand, nose, ear, eye, and tongue. Lys leaned closer.

The drawing twitched. Strings of
gold tugged at the lines, and for a moment the drawing scattered into a million bits of color, all pushed out to the edge of the page. Then, as if resetting itself, the lines came together to form a new picture. This one swept across the page, showing the inside of an enormous cave, filled with people, all of them fighting.

Lys couldn’t tear her eyes away as the little figures fought and died in front of her, like a rough sketch of a computer-generated battle from a blockbuster movie. The perspective slowly zoomed in to reveal four people standing around a fifth, who lay on the ground in a pool of inky blood. A man with the symbol of a finger on his wrist stepped forward and touched the injured figure. The red ink drew back into the body, and the injured woman got to her feet. The five of them moved to surround the depression in the ground and raised their hands.

Mr. Mason’s voice yanked Lys
back into the present. “This tells us that the picture shows five magic users, all neutrals as you can see, regulating the amount of magic that comes into the world.” He gestured toward the text on the opposite page.

Lys blinked, and the figures froze—just as she had first seen them. She tried to process Mr. Mason’s words. “Regulating the amount of magic? But why?”

“I’m no scholar, but what we have been able to translate tells us that the outlets of magic to our world had to be . . . maintained. Not constantly, but this book speaks of a group of neutrals that traveled to these spots and used their power level to keep the magic from getting out of balance.”

“But why?” Lys asked again, giving the book one last hard look. “If magic was part of this world, why would it need to be balanced?”

“Fire is part of our world, so is rain, wind, earthquakes, and a thousand other things that can throw the balance of an ecosystem off. Given time, the environment will right itself. According to the texts we have found, magic often spiked through one outlet, temporarily leaving the others with less power. The magic would eventually re-balance itself, but the magic users of this world discovered a way to keep it from spiking in the first place. Preventative medicine, so to speak.”